Software engineer became Founder of Rocket Academy

Watch the full interview here:

In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we talked with Kai Yuen, he was working as Software engineer for the past. And quite some time awhile, he discovered that he doesn't want to stay on working for others, he wanted to come out and be the one to give work opportunities to people. So he started his own Rocket Academy as a Founder. We hope you learned something from Kai Yuen's stories, enjoy!

Can you share about yourself, your background, what you do now?

Absolutely! Thanks for having me here. My name is Kai, and I'm the founder at Rocket Academy. Rocket Academy is an online coding bootcamp that trains people to be software engineers and guarantees jobs. We have a free introductory course for anyone who's curious about coding, wants to learn the basics, and we also have a paid bootcamp course which is a six-month full-time or 12-month part-time course that helps people become software engineers.

Well, my background is actually in software engineering. I studied computer science at Stanford, did an undergrad and a masters in computer science there. I worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, China, Singapore, and Jakarta as well, at a few tech companies like Facebook, Alibaba, and Nuna Healthcare. Through these experiences, I realized that everybody struggles to find software engineers. When we were hiring software engineers, we realized, "Oh wow, it's challenging to find good people." And when I was working in these places, of course, we knew boot camps existed, and there were boot camps, but one thing I felt is that generally, I found that people who are coming out of boot camp sometimes lacked the fundamentals, not grounding in fundamentals in software engineering, computer science fundamentals naturally because the boot camp is so short.

And when I was thinking of starting a business in 2019, I was looking around at different ideas and stumbled upon some innovative ideas in the US where the courses were longer and they were online. I felt that, "Wow, okay, if the courses are longer, that means we can actually teach more fundamentals, and the courses are online, it means that we can actually scale this without having to build or renovate or rent a physical center, which allows us to move faster and reach more people."

So, I took these concepts and I said, "Hey, one, companies can't find enough good software engineers, and two, people are hesitant to join the shorter boot camps because they may be concerned that, 'Hey, this may not actually get me the career outcome that I want because it's so short,' but at the same time, university courses are so long and so expensive."

So, I was thinking if Rocket Academy can provide something in between, which is longer and more comprehensive than the typical boot camps but also shorter and more efficient than the university courses, I think we can provide a great offering that can bridge this talent gap between people who want to become software engineers and the market of employers who want to hire a good software engineer.

To people considering working in America, share us your perspective, what's the difference between America and Singapore?

It's quite, I would say, because the tech industry is more mature in Silicon Valley. I can't generalize for all of the US, but in general, Silicon Valley, the tech industry is more mature, and so there are more established career progressions for people to go through. So, if you go to most companies, I think maybe Google was one of the first companies that pioneered this leveling system for engineers, and now even a lot of the startups, they adopt very similar leveling systems. These leveling systems, they're usually numbered, so you might start at something like E3, which is like Engineer Three, and it goes up to something like E7 or E8 even, and where E5 is the point where actually if you got to E5, you can actually stay at E5 for the rest of your career and you'll still be successful.

So, there are these mature leveling systems where it's very clear what you need to do to achieve the next level, to get to the next level in terms of your output at the company. And so, that maturity in terms of the leveling system makes it more predictable as an engineer. You can kind of tell, "Okay, if I join this company, within this general period of time, I should be able to reach this level, should be able to reach this level." You can plan your career progression better.

Whereas in Singapore and Southeast Asia, because there are fewer tech companies that have become big and really made it big on the world stage, there haven't been as mature career pathways for people. It's only starting to appear now as some of the companies are trying to become unicorns and start to IPO and exit in larger ways.

And so, what does this mean? This naturally means that one, there's a larger concentration of expertise in tech or with software engineering or otherwise in Silicon Valley. At the same time, it also means that there's more opportunity to leapfrog maybe or even be a pioneer in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Because if there's a lack of talent, then you just have to be the leader. It's said, yes, because if you're not leading, then nobody else is leading, right? So, right when the guys who started Google, right, they were not super senior software engineers when they started Google. They were just master students, yet they had to adopt these leadership positions because they were the pioneers.

So, the same similar opportunities exist in Southeast Asia today.

What's your personal goals as software engineer and now as the Founder of Rocket Academy?

So fascinating. I think since I moved back to Singapore, one of my aspirations has been to build a successful business. Initially, it wasn't even tied to education when I started. Yeah, it was just, I want to build a successful business. Initially, I thought I wanted to do something in an area where it affects positive change, areas like healthcare, education, food, housing, these kinds of areas. And so, when I started actually starting healthcare during my first startup, and the motivation for building a business was this: I felt like if we look at the Fortune 500 companies in the world today, the biggest companies in the world, the majority of them are from the US and China.

And what this means is that these companies are MNCs, multinational companies, and they are bringing in revenue from the rest of the world to their countries, US and China, to enrich the US and Chinese people, which is great. And there are a lot of migrants who go to the US to search for better lives and in search for better lives. But what that means is that for developing countries, especially for those of us in Southeast Asia, if we are not having our own MNCs which are bringing in capital from the rest of the world, earning capital from the rest of the world, then we are more of so-called servants or so-called workers of the MNCs that are in the US and China. And then it makes it harder for us to bring in the revenue to invest, bring in more revenue to invest in our fundamentals of our societies like healthcare and education, which then help us have more equal opportunities to compete with others in Western countries or more developed countries in the world.

And so, it really is motivated by this desire to not just build my own company but to inspire and to support other entrepreneurs to build these businesses that can become multinational companies from Southeast Asia such that our governments can invest in healthcare and education to give our people better lives. And right, because we have to grow the fire, we have to grow the pie first before we can redistribute, that's fine. And we need more businesses, local businesses, that can help grow the pie so that was the main motivation and I looked around at different ideas. I started in healthcare, I thought about logistics, and ultimately, the opportunity that I thought was the best match for my background, and my motivations, and my experiences was Rocket Academy, essentially, tech education.

Tell us about Singapore, what's the strategy for techies? 

I know that Singapore wants to position itself as the tech hub for at least the region. And I think some strategies that Singapore has been doing to achieve that are, for example, offering tax incentives for multinational companies to set up their regional headquarters in Singapore. And there are other reasons why MNCs may like to put their regional headquarters in Singapore. I think stability, tax incentives help, the English language, and maybe some perceptions around the quality of talent in Singapore can help as well.

What is it like in Singapore, I think it is really right now what it feels like is that there are so many companies that want to set up the regional HQ here, and we just don't have enough tech talent yet. Okay. And so, Rocket Academy, being a software engineering bootcamp, we try and fill this gap. And of course, universities and polytechnics and other bootcamps also exist to try and fill this gap. And Singapore also offers work visas for people in the region to come to Singapore and earn the so-called higher salaries from these companies in Singapore and fill the tech talent gap. These companies are also a lot of them are open to hiring remotely. So we have tech teams in Malaysia, we have tech teams in Indonesia and Vietnam and the Philippines, for example, that are working for companies that might have their regional headquarters in Singapore.

Let's say there's an equally talented guy in Indonesia and Malaysia who's doing it for half the price of a Singaporean, why can't Singaporean hire the Indonesians?

I think there are two main factors here to consider. One is just that the Singapore government has some requirements, so if you're a multinational company operating in Singapore, you have to have a certain percentage of Singaporeans in your workforce. That's just a government requirement.

But the other thing, if we talk about free market forces, I think labor in developing countries is generally cheaper than labor in developed countries. So salaries generally in Malaysia and Indonesia are lower than salaries in Singapore, for example, on average.

And so when companies are looking to hire, especially—and I'm speaking primarily for software engineers here, maybe not for other roles—but for software engineers, I think one of the often overlooked skills or important competencies of software engineers is communication skills. And so when deciding whether to hire, whether it's a Malaysian, Indonesian, or Singaporean, I'm not just looking for the person who commands or who asks for the lowest salary, because there is a difference. Even within junior software engineers, we don't just need someone who can be a code monkey, someone who I have to say, "Okay, write this code, exactly this," and they type it out. I'm looking for someone to solve problems for me. And if, regardless of where they're from, as long as they can communicate clearly and solve the problems effectively, then that's great. And if they're more affordable, then absolutely, I would go ahead and hire them. So that's the consideration. So that's why Singaporeans really need to watch out.

When people ask "Do I go to university or Rocket Academy", how do you tell them?

There are two main reasons, in my opinion, to attend university, although other people may have different opinions. It's just my perspective. The two main reasons for university are brand and network. Brand is important because having a reputable university on your resume instills confidence in others, whether you're seeking a job, starting your own business, or selling something. The second reason is network. By attending a school that attracts talented individuals, you naturally build connections with people who will go on to achieve great things in their careers. This network can be invaluable for your own career advancement, whether you're seeking help, partnerships, or job opportunities.

So, while you can learn the same material elsewhere, the brand and network associated with university are the most tangible benefits. With Rocket Academy, we aim to achieve similar standards of brand and network. We do this by carefully selecting students who meet a certain level of coding aptitude and communication skills. We believe that attracting the best students creates an environment where everyone benefits from being surrounded by high achievers.

For individuals deciding between university and Rocket Academy, it comes down to how much they value the brand and network they'll gain. University typically takes four years and can be more expensive, so it's important to weigh whether the time and investment in university are worth it for the brand and network, or if they'd prefer to gain a strong brand and network through Rocket Academy and start their career as a software engineer sooner. It's about considering the value of the branded network from university versus Rocket Academy's brand and network.

Covid has disrupted especially the university side, what are universities doing to compete against Rocket Academy, what do they plan to do?

Presumptuous to think that universities are competing against Rocket, but I think broadcast is a threat. I think most universities have never heard of Rocket Academy yet, and they don't. They probably don't even think, I'm sure they have, but I don't know. But I do see universities responding to, for example, what we're seeing with Covid. A lot of people are questioning, especially with remote university learning, why am I paying so much and spending so much time to go to university when it's almost like doing online watching online courses? Yeah, and so the good, you know, the top, you know, the top-ranked universities are still getting a lot of applicants, but the long-tail universities are struggling. And what I see the longer tail of universities doing to adapt to this, they are starting to think about how they can make their courses more practical, right? Because people are wondering, why would I pay so much to watch these online courses when I can't get a job? And so what the longer tale of universities are doing is they're starting to make their courses more practical, so to say. And one of the, in for software engineering specifically, one of the strategies that I see some universities doing is partnering with so-called white-label bootcamp providers to provide bootcamp education, but the university chops their brand on. And we see this in the US. We've seen this, for example, with a company called Trilogy, which is the so-called white-label bootcamp solution. And then we have universities that chop their brand on it, and they say, okay, right, University of such and such offers a three-month bootcamp, and it's actually the education is provided by the boot camp company, but the university puts their brand on it, yeah, yeah. So that's one, one reaction. I also see universities, like NUS for example, starting to offer more postgraduate courses to help people become pick up tech skills, yeah, but still they're still very academic, generally speaking. I would say they're more academically focused than what a boot camp would be.

We don't have a shortage of tech people, we have a shortage on tech talents, what's your thoughts about this statement?

Yeah, this is a fascinating topic that I've thought about. I think there are two kinds of software engineers in the world: there are the factory worker software engineers, and there are the knowledge worker software engineers. It's good there's a binary there, but generally speaking, I see there are two kinds of software engineers in the world.

Typically, factory worker software engineers, you can imagine, right? A factory worker, you have one hammer, and you hammer that thing over that nail over and over again. You know one language or you know one framework, and you can write the same code again and again and again. That's a factory worker, right? But given a general problem, that the factory worker engineer may not be able to connect that problem to the solution. The optimal solution may not be able to evaluate whether that problem is even worth solving in the first place for the company, right? So, the factory worker is really someone who can take a hammer and nail and hammer.

The knowledge worker software engineer is more of the general-purpose problem solver. So, they are people who can communicate with their peers to figure out what actually is this problem. Is it worth solving? If it is worth solving, what are our options for solutions, and what solution gives us the best desired outcome? And then, if they decide, once they decide what's the best solution, they can actually go and do it, regardless of what it is, regardless of what language or framework is. They'll just pick it up and make it happen, yes?

And everybody, I mean, most companies, I wouldn't, would love to hire more knowledge workers. Often, especially the tech companies, would love to hire more knowledge workers, but they just can't find enough of these knowledge worker software just there. I think, in my opinion, there are more than enough factory worker software engineers in the world, people who have learned how to type a specific language or framework to build a very specific thing and can just do that over and over again. But what I find to be lacking in so-called factory worker software engineers is the communication skills, is the general problem-solving, and logical skill.

What's the reality of the factory worker jobs, do they get paid really shitty?

Well, I think it comes down to career growth as a software engineer. Are you being paid to be a so-called code monkey, that is just asked to do repetitive tasks? If you are just doing repetitive tasks over and over again, you are not learning. And if you're not learning, you're not becoming more valuable as an employee. And if you're not becoming more valuable as an employee, then your pay is not going to go up.

So when someone asks me, like, what kind of software engineering job is a bad software job, what kind of software job is a good software job, I would say a software engineering job that helps you learn and progress as a software engineer, that's solving increasingly complex technical problems or increasingly complex business problems, that's a great job. Because you are getting more valuable as an employee and if you switch companies, now you could get a pay raise, essentially.

Whereas if you are someone who's, if your company is a place where they say stay in your lane, just build this one thing over and over and over again, then that's a bad sign, right? If you feel that your learning is plateauing, then you know, generally, it's probably time to switch because there are so many other software jobs where you can keep learning forever. You're being paid to learn. There's no need to stay at a job where you're just being stagnant.

Anything to tell the audience before we call it a day?

I would like to say for entrepreneurs, I think we have to find the idea that it's the best fit for our background, it's difficult to find that idea. For me it took a few years and so we just need to be prepared for that journey especially for the the earlier entrepreneur just being prepared for that journey of discovery. What is the best idea that the market wants, that is the best fit for my background and once you find that idea, hold on to it!

Thanks for the awesome interview !

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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